ONE-TWENTY TWO: Trading Financial Markets
Exploring the poetry in financial markets for students of money and economy since the year 2000.
First Solar (FSLR) has made a good recovery from the selling following February’s earnings report. Two weeks ago, FSLR closed as high as 9% above its price before its previous earnings and completed a 40% run-up from February’s bottom. The recent highs also marked the post-earnings highs from October’s poorly received earnings report. The stock … Read more
China’s Shanghai Composite Index plunged during most of 2008, bottoming at the end of October after a 68% loss. You could be excused for being unaware of the slow-moving crash at the time given all the hype about the summer Olympics in Beijing and the building excitement about investing in China as an “escape” from … Read more
When news broke of SEC charges of fraud against GS, investors quickly dumped DB out of fear that the SEC would soon target DB for its involvement in creating toxic collateralized debt obligations (CDOs). While the selling in GS has gained momentum, the selling in DB has ever so slightly reversed. On Monday, GS broke … Read more
Toll Brothers (TOL) has disappointed market participants with its earnings reports over the past 12 months. For example, December’s earnings generated a one-day drop over 7% that finished eliminating a strong gap up in response to November’s preliminary report. However, February’s earnings barely generated a yawn. A week later, the stock resumed an uptrend that … Read more
Goldman's Defense: We Lost Money on Subprime Market – CNBC When Goldman Sachs CEO Lloyd Blankfein and six other company executives testify before a Senate subcommittee on Tuesday there likely will be talk about how the firm manages risk, a lot about how they took actions to protect the firm and its clients during the … Read more
The Busted Homes Behind a Big Bet: Personal Finance News from Yahoo! Finance The government's civil-fraud allegation against Goldman Sachs Group Inc. centers on a deal the firm crafted so that hedge-fund king John Paulson could bet on a collapse in U.S. housing prices. It was a dizzyingly complex transaction, involving 90 bonds and a … Read more
On April 1, 2010, the Swiss National Bank (SNB) apparently intervened to arrest the appreciation of its currency against the euro, and I wondered whether this action would be as futile as all the other interventions this year. So far, so good for the SNB, as the previously persistent buyers of Swiss francs have all … Read more
Investment Strategy: Banks May Not Be Lending, But They Are Buying Treasurys – CNBC With credit conditions still tight and Congress likely to clamp down on risk in the financial industry, banks are turning toward the safety of government debt, helping keep interest rates low but still not providing credit to consumers. (tags: treasuries banks)
The CNBC interview post below with Marilyn Cohen (from Envision Capital and author of “Bonds Now!: Making Money in the New Fixed Income Landscape“) is a good watch for anyone interested in fixed income. One key statistic that caught my attention was Cohen’s claim that more money went into bond funds last year than went … Read more
NYC tenants in defaulted properties demand fixes – Yahoo! Finance But in the chaos of the national housing collapse, in thousands of buildings like this one that have fallen into default and where tenants have watched the owners walk away, the answer to one simple question is not always clear: Who is responsible for fixing … Read more